Natia

Natia is 31 years old. She lives in Tskaltubo District with her husband, Zurab, two daughters (1 and 6 years old) and an 84-year-old grandmother. Natia has requested loans from local financial institutions several times for a family agricultural business start-up, but without any success. Her loan requests were rejected because of low income and family’s poor living conditions.

The only source of the income for the family is the monthly pension of Natia’s grandmother and a small income earned through a small-scale agricultural business. The family grows nut trees on a family-owned plot of land. They sell harvested nuts locally. According to Credo estimations, the family belongs to the subsistence poor category.

Natia requested a loan from Credo to start an agricultural business. Her loan request was approved in the frame of new joint initiative of Kiva and Credo. The start-up loan program envisages provision of business start-up and re-startup credits with soft conditions to the country's rural poor, who do not have access to credit products, being regarded as “high risk borrowers” because of low income.

With the received credit, Natia will pay for tilling a family-owned plot of the land to prepare it for seeding greens. Also Natia will purchase fertilizers and seeds. She will work hard on the plot during all seasons to harvest good greens. Natia will sell the harvested greens locally to wholesalers. The new business initiative will significantly increase the monthly income of the family and allow Natia to provide better living conditions for her children and other members of the family.

Additional Information

More information about this loan

This loan is part of Credo's startup loan program targeting particularly vulnerable clients who live at the subsistence level and have been unable to obtain credit due to lack of income from an existing business. This program offers them a longer repayment term and an annual interest rate that is 5% lower than the standard interest rate. By funding this loan, you are supporting a program that gives borrowers a second chance to start and grow small businesses. This has the potential to alleviate the effects of poverty, significantly improving borrowers' incomes and their families' quality of life. Learn more about Credo's startup loan program on the Kiva Blog.

About LLC Micro Finance Organization Credo

LLC Credo (Credo) is a microfinance organization in Georgia that provides sustainable credit services to alleviate poverty in rural areas, including business loans, agriculture loans, household loans, crop insurance and more. Kiva lenders’ funds are used to help the organization expand its outreach to even more entrepreneurs, farmers and households in remote areas.